Went fishing today and spent about an hour and a half hissing 'dammit!' as sunfish after sunfish either immediately spit the hook out or got away the second I tugged. I caught one green sunfish, five unidentified sunfish that flopped off in midair, and one male longear that I decided to keep. Unfortunately, I've apparently messed up the removal of a barb from this hook, and it took me several to get the hook out. Half-numb hands and tiny hooks don't mix. I finally got the hook out when I tried to cut the shaft and the hook somehow popped out from the pressure of the scissors.
The sunfish looks okay -color still there, breathing fairly normally, etc- but he's floating on his side when he stops trying to swim. He was swimming normally when I caught him, as far as I could tell. Now, I don't think he hit up against anything when I was getting him into my bag of water, and I didn't squeeze him. Could he have air caught in his mouth/gills due to my inept attempts at removing the hook? If not, what's wrong and how can I make it better?
I will add that this river is FULL of algae in spots and is listed as polluted. It's possible he has swim bladder issues from that, but all the sunfish I saw were swimming normally and could hover in place and stay upright. I don't think it's a major possibility.
On a side note, I won't be doing this again. I feel guilty. I'm going to catch the other longears for this tank another way...
Edited by Betta132, 06 March 2015 - 08:27 PM.